You want to be with someone who you are constantly learning from, but you also feel like you give back to.
My dad was a wrestler in high school. He was really good and had a great amateur background, but it was always his dream to be in the WWE.
He was a champion, and if he can be a champion, then what’s stopping me from going for the championship as well? Rey has definitely shown people that there’s nothing that can stop you if you can push through.
For me, when it started off with Lita she was always my favorite. She can do what the guys can do, and I wanted to be like that when I was younger.
Well, I thought to myself if Rey Mysterio could do it, why can I do it? So I always took up his style, even as far as hitting the second rope.
When I got to MSG, I had to look around and just take it in. I looked at the crowd and couldn’t believe it. Instead of butterflies in my stomach, I had hawks!
When I see more than one female wrestling match on the card, I get so excited because it gives us more of a platform to show what we can do.
The Andrade I knew in Mexico would do anything to get to the top and even more to stay on top.
After 9/11, you kind of didn’t want to open up your heart to more pain.
With wrestling, you don’t have that great of a window if you’re a woman. So for me, I’d say around 30 to 35 is where I’d be like ‘OK, I’m good.’ But if I haven’t accomplished everything I’ve wanted to and still have a chance to, then I’m going to keep doing it.
Whatever it is that you do, dial it up to a 10 because for me people won’t necessarily think I am the best wrestler in the world, but I can do what others can’t.
Seeing my face when they run ads for an upcoming Raw or SmackDown is pretty insane.
I felt incomplete. I was always happy but I felt incomplete and that I needed to be pushing through.
It’s truly amazing to see where determination and drive will lead you.
Everybody told me I was too small to be a wrestler.
People don’t understand that Andrade is the best thing going here in WWE. I’m just the one that enhances it.
At one point when we recorded ‘Fighting with My Family’ at the Staples Center it was an incredible feeling and I loved it but I was playing AJ Lee and I wanted it to be me.
I don’t think I have ever been completely satisfied, which is probably the right way to say it. I always felt like I wanted more.
Andrade had a large reputation to uphold because of his rich family heritage in Mexico, and he upheld that reputation because of my management behind the scenes.
It’s something I’m almost addicted to… wrestling, it’s weird, but it’s always been that. Everybody looks at me like, ‘Oh my god, you’re so small, why would you want to mess up your face, what are you doing?’ But I’m in love with it.
Just to show I had everything working against me: I’m small, my memory isn’t all there, but I was a hard worker and I wanted people to realize, you may have weight problems working against you, height problems, whatever, but you can still conquer it and go for your dreams.
It was crazy to say that I have the guidance of Paul Heyman out of all these people. Eight-year-old real me is like, is this real life?
The funny thing is I have known AJ Lee. She started in New Jersey; I worked in New York. We have crossed paths and she was always great with me and always sweet to me but obviously I went one way and she went to WWE.
Listen, if anyone knows Aleister Black, it’s me.
I had Tommy Dreamer, who’s amazing to me, from the very first day I met him – he actually was the one to say to me, ‘I believe in you, I know that you can do this. Let’s see what you can do at TNA.’
Andrade had fame and popularity in Mexico, and he experienced that same fanfare when he made his NXT debut.
I use wrestling as my connection with my dad because that’s something that me and him shared.
I want to be the female Rey Mysterio. Whether it’s with a mask or not, I want to be him.
As soon as I get on the mic that’s something you can’t really match with me, so whenever I accompany Andrade to the ring I make sure that no matter what it was I was doing, I make sure that I was a part of it and to make sure that the moment you will remember when Zelina does a crazy thing.
